11 AGOSTO 1983
Cuarta protesta nacional contra la dictadura convocada por el Comando Nacional de Trabajadores, 18.000 militares y carabineros controlaron las manifestaciones dejando 26 civiles muertos incluyendo 3 ninos, mas de cien personas heridas a bala y casi 1.000 personas arrestadas.
Forty years ago, on September 11, 1973, a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet toppled the democratic socialist government of Chile. President Salvador Allende was killed during the attack to seize La Moneda presidential palace. In the aftermath of the coup, a quarter of a million people were detained for their political beliefs, 3000 were killed or disappeared and many thousands were tortured.
Some years later in 1981, while Pinochet ruled Chile with iron fist, a young photographer called Juan Carlos Caceres started to freelance in the streets of Santiago and the poblaciones or poor outskirts, showing the growing resistance against the dictatorship. For the next 10 years Caceres photographed every single protest and social movement fighting for the restoration of democracy. He knew that his camera was his only weapon, he knew that his fate was to register the daily violence and leave his images for the History.
In this days Caceres is working to rescue and organize his collection of images in the project Imagenes de la Resistencia . With support of some Chilean official institutions, thousands of negatives are digitalized and organized to set up the more complete visual heritage of this violent period of Chile´s history.
In a time when technology was not very friendly and communications were kind of basic, Juan Carlos Caceres and other photojournalist were always at the right place in the right moment defying the threats of the police. Their work is now a visual heritage that documents and remind us the fight of Chilean people for democracy.« less